When he hit his 61st home run of ’61 to break Babe Ruth’s all-time single-season record, part of Roger Maris’ reward was special punctuation. And though the well-known “asterisk” was mythical, it took a vote by baseball’s “Committee for Statistical Accuracy” to have it removed in 1991, by which time Maris had been dead for six years.

When eclipsing Maris with his 62nd home run of 1998 — a season that’s now scandalized as much as it was sensationalized — Mark McGwire certainly was not assigned such an asterisk. Despite his long-avoided admission of steroid use, all of McGwire’s vaunted power numbers still stand in baseball’s ledgers.

Period.

Never officially sanctioned, but served nicely by confession and some well-placed apologies, McGwire will be in uniform at Petco Park on Tuesday. He’s the Los Angeles Dodgers’ new hitting coach — by all accounts, an extremely good one at that — and thus has a spot in the visiting dugout for the Padres’ home opener.

McGwire is not alone. While Major League Baseball has cracked down on performance enhancing drugs in recent years — Padres catcher Yasmani Grandal is currently serving a 50-game suspension for failing a PED test — the league never punished the original PED violators, officially or unofficially.

There have been no suspensions for players who admitted to using PEDs before they were banned. Some, like Andy Pettitte and Jason Giambi are still playing. Besides maybe Jose Canseco, who originally blew the whistle on steroid use, no players have been blacklisted by teams.

“Mark McGwire confronted his use of performance-enhancing substances as a player,” an MLB spokesman said of McGwire’s return to uniform. “Being truthful is always the correct course of action, which is why Commissioner (Bud) Selig asked Senator George Mitchell to conduct his investigation.

“Mark’s statement of contrition served as an example to others and has made his re-entry into the game easier.”

The Mitchell Report, released in late 2007, contained the findings of a 21-month investigation into steroids and human-growth-hormone use by MLB players. U.S. Senator Mitchell (D-Maine) conducted the investigation and released a 409-page document that included the names of 89 players who are alleged to have used PEDs.

While being mentioned in the Mitchell Report contained a public stigma, it never included any repercussions from the league.

Matt Williams is the third-base coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Glenallen Hill the first-base coach for the Colorado Rockies, both after being named in the Mitchell Report as players. Wally Joyner, who admitted trying steroids when he was with the Padres, is assistant hitting coach with the Philadelphia Phillies.

None of the aforementioned, however, had the clout of Big Mac. From his rookie year of 1986 through his farewell season of 2001, McGwire averaged 50 homers per every 162 games he played. His 1998 duel with Sammy Sosa in pursuit of Maris’ record is credited with bringing Americans back to the game from a post-strike malaise.